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[FYI] (Fwd) FIPR-Bulletin: Award for Outstanding Research in Privacy
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To: <bulletin@admin.fipr.org> (FIPR Bulletin)
Date sent: Tue, 01 Apr 2003 16:55:30 +0100
From: Richard Clayton <listmaster@admin.fipr.org>
Subject: FIPR-Bulletin: Award for Outstanding Research in Privacy
Enhancing Technology
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FIPR does not usually republish Microsoft's Press Releases, but this
one is interesting for a number of reasons:
* it shows that Microsoft is starting to pay some real attention to
privacy issues (by putting money into awards and sponsoring research
conferences in this field);
* it illustrates one of the things that Caspar Bowden, the first
Director of FIPR, is getting up to in his new job;
* and, not least, it gives FIPR the chance to congratulate Andrei and
George ( who was one of the first to become a "Friend of FIPR"
http://www.fipr.org/friends.html ) upon their achievement.
Microsoft's release does not go deeply into what the academic paper
was actually about, and why it is worthy of an award.... the
nomination text is rather technical, so that may be why :-)
This paper marks the beginning of a new era in the measurement
and analysis of anonymity. The most popular previous metric of
anonymity was the anonymity set. The authors nicely show many
of the limitations of that approach and then go on to define
anonymity in terms of the information theoretic notion of
entropy. This approach takes probabilities into account.
Various other papers have also attempted to account for
probabilities in defining anonymity. However, none of them has
the generality of this approach. The definitions of degree of
anonymity set out by Reiter and Rubin, Diaz et al., and others
have some appeal, most notably in lending themselves to a
normalized metric; however, the model in the former is less
general and the normalization in the latter more ad hoc than
the work in this paper.
This paper also illustrates the applicability of its ideas by
using them to do a novel comparison of the anonymity of
different types of mixes as well as showing the affects of
route length parameters on anonymity of fielded systems.
The approach of this paper has already influenced successive
theoretical work. I believe this will be seen in the future as
the seminal paper for what will become the dominant
theoretical approach to anonymity in years to come. However,
beyond its theoretical significance, as the approach is
further explored and developed, I believe that an analysis
based on ideas set out in this paper will be one of the
distinctions between those implemented systems for anonymous
communication that have been adequately evaluated to be
trusted and those that have not.
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Microsoft Press Release
=======================
PET2003 and Microsoft Announce Annual Award for Outstanding Research
in Privacy Enhancing Technology
First recipients win award for paper on the measurement and analysis
of anonymity
Dresden, Germany - Mar. 27, 2003 - The Privacy Enhancing Technologies
Workshop (PET2003) and Microsoft has announced the creation of the
Privacy Enhancing Technology research award that will be presented
annually to researchers who have made an outstanding contribution to
the theory, design, implementation, or deployment of privacy enhancing
technology.
The first winners of the award, announced yesterday at PET2003 in
Dresden, are Andrei Serjantov and George Danezis for their work on the
measurement and analysis of anonymity. Their work was selected from a
number of nominated papers by the PET2003 award committee made up of
leading academics and researchers in this field.
"The aim of the PET award is to raise awareness of new research and
technologies that aim to protect end users from profiling and secure
their personal data," said Caspar Bowden, Senior Privacy Strategist of
Microsoft EMEA. "We hope that our sponsorship of this award will
stimulate and encourage the important research being done in this
field. As we continue to address privacy concerns and improve the
design processes of our products, we are committed to actively
engaging with leading academic and research groups to share best
practice and develop appropriate solutions.
The award winning paper by Andrei Serjantov and George Danezis was
entitled "Towards an Information Theoretic Metric for Anonymity" and
can be found at
PDF: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~gd216/set.pdf
Postscript: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~aas23/papers_aas/set.ps
About PET Workshop
The PET Workshop is a yearly conference that brings together anonymity
and privacy experts from around the world to discuss recent advances
and new perspectives in the design and realization of privacy and
anticensorship services for the Internet and other communication
networks.
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (NASDAQ "MSFT") is the worldwide leader in
software, services and Internet technologies for personal and business
computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services
designed to empower people through great software - any time, any
place and on any device. This year, Microsoft celebrates the 20th
anniversary of its operations in Europe, Middle East and Africa.
Microsoft and Windows are either registered trademarks or trademarks
of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries.
Notes to Editors
================
Andrei Serjantov is a final year research student in the Cambridge
University Computer Laboratory under the direction of Dr Peter Sewell.
He is a member of the Security group and Theory and Semantics group.
His current research interests include design and analysis of
anonymity systems, peer to peer systems, and privacy enhancing
technologies in general. Previously, he has worked on semantics of
network protocols and functional programming languages.
Andrei is a program committee member of the Privacy Enhancing
Technologies (PETs) Workshop 2003 and a member of the PETs advisory
board.
Andrei graduated in Computer Science from Cambridge University in
1999 and held the Henry Fellowship to Yale University in 2000. He
is a scholar of Queens' College, member of the Cambridge
Philosophical Society, and the Cambridge University Mountaineering
Club.
Apart from his academic activities, Andrei enjoys rock climbing,
travelling, badminton and ballroom dancing.
George Danezis is a research student in the Cambridge University
Computer Laboratory. He is a member of the Security Group and his
Ph.D. is being supervised by Dr Ross Anderson. His research interests
focus on the design of robust anonymous communications networks and
protocols but he also works on information hiding and other
surveillance related technologies.
Besides studying the technical aspects of surveillance George has
also participated in conferences and forums about the policy
surrounding it. He has written reports, trained and consulted for
NGOs and other groups about using technology safely.
George graduated in Computer Science from Cambridge University in
2000. He is a scholar of Queens' College, and his research is partly
funded by the Cambridge University European Trust.
In his free time George enjoys practising photography and Martial
Arts.
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